Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions

by Jonathan D. Culler

Theory has drawn to the study of literature many distinct fields; but it has also now widened its brief substantially to include many hitherto non-literary issues. To interpret the "sign" now involves "framing" it - setting it up, rigging it, actively setting it off against its surrounds; in this book the author sets out to frame the frames of contemporary criticism. Beginning with a substantial historical overview of the relationship between criticism and the academy, he moves on to explore what has come to characterize contemporary theory - its preoccupation with ideology, the "call to history" - with a polemical examination of Michel Foucault and Terry Eagleton. Out of this emerges the author's own idea of what forms political criticism might take, and, with a new look at William Empson, he takes to task the unchallenged immunity that pseudo-Christian ideology enjoys in our views of literature. The book also includes a major reassessment of the impact made by one of the last twenty years' most important critical voices, that of Paul de Man. In lighter vein, it gives us a semiological look at the worlds of junk and tourism, as well as legal rhetoric. The book also gives considered attention to the problems of language and context in Habermas' influential attempt to infer norms from communicative practice.

Genres: Nonfiction

10 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Culler's Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature won the James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association of America in 1976 for an outstanding book of criticism. Structuralist Poetics was one of the first introductions to the French structuralist movement available in English.

Culler’s contribution to the Very Short Introductions series, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, received praise for its innovative technique of organization. Instead of chapters to schools and their methods, the book's eight chapters address issues and problems of literary theory.

In The Literary in Theory (2007) Culler discusses the notion of Theory and literary history’s role in the larger realm of literary and cultural theory. He defines Theory as an interdisciplinary body of work including structuralist linguistics, anthropology, Marxism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are so many reasons to love Jonathan Culler: his masterful fluency with almost all modern critical theory; his ability to express complex concepts and conclusions in easy to follow terms; his willingness to refute anybody who writes about literature and to do so in a polite, erudite way. He does that and more here. The giants targeted in this text include Terry Eagleton and Habermas. To call Culler anti-Marxist is probably overstatement, but he makes no qualms about stating the limitations he sees in Marxist literary criticism. The tone of the book varies, early chapters about the intellectual history of literary criticism in America make quick reads, as do later chapters about the semiotics of tourism and the theory of fiction (no, really!). At other times the text grows heavy and harder to follow. I will admit to reading on despite not fully grasping everything in the chapters on De Man and Habermas. Ultimately, this is a great book that challenges readers to look beyond the commonly inscribed limits of literary criticism. The chapters on religious literary interpretation (spoiler alert: C is not a fan), rubbish theory, and the theory of fiction are not to be missed. I also recommend the chapters on Eagleton ("The Call to History") and Habermas if you have ever read them and suspected that their deft, dense literary/philosophical expositions disguised some large holes in interpretive method.

[Christina]

Read in my Literary Criticism course